The Ghost Hunters returned to their roots last night with an excellent investigation of an abandoned elementary school in Alton, Illinois. The TAPS team investigated ‘Grammar School Ghosts’ at the Milton School, parts of which date back to 1912 and it now consists of an impressive 85,000 square feet.

Given a tour by paranormal investigator Alixandria ‘I need to spell my first name for people for the rest of my life because my parents had to be different’ Andrews the Ghost Hunters are told about a murder of a little girl named Mary who was raped and murdered by an evil janitor who committed suicide before they could catch him although he left a note behind confessing to the crime. The school has reported voices, footsteps, door activity and several instances of apparitions as well as a couple of ‘faces in the windows.’

Beginning the investigation are Jason and Grant in the Girl’s shower room, reported to be where the little girl’s body was found. As Grant begins to recant the story we are quickly reminded by Jason that the story of the murder is straight out of ‘lore’ and that it needs to be researched. A terrific beginning with the team going back to their ‘old school’ roots of not taking the word of the interested parties and actually doing the research themselves.

Almost immediately Jason and Grant begin to experience odd activity. As Jason reaches in to a room that still has a light on, the flicking off of the light is soon followed by 2 popping sounds, startling Jason and causing him to jump out of the room. While it was a great bit of fun, it did strike me as odd that there would still be a light on in the building, isn’t that the first 3 minutes of every single Ghost Hunters episode ever made? ‘Let’s go lights-out.’ Odd. No?

Next up we find Britt Griffith and Joe Chin (who was standing in for KJ McKinnon) in the boiler room of the school. As they wait to become accustomed to the space they hear loud footsteps and the floor/ceiling creaking above them. Running up the stairs to investigate they find nothing. Once again, a great piece of evidence but nothing other than the sound is caught on tape.

Jason and Grant once again head to the locker rooms, this time the Boys’ side where they experience a loud explosion noise followed by a large spark. We know this because Jason tells us it sparked not because they caught the spark on tape. The sound and flash appear to have come from a drying rack of some sort that was left from the last tenant, a glass blowing company. Testing it out, Jason fails to get electrocuted and they set up a camera in the hope of catching a repeat of the experience on tape.

Britt and Joe have perhaps the funniest experience of the night while outside the Girls’ bathroom. As they are talking and reviewing the experiences that were reported they hear a noise that Joe says sounds like someone saying ‘ssshhh’ to which Britt replies “Did we just get shushed?” I don’t know about you but I’m going to kind of miss Britt when he heads off to Ghost Hunters International.

Although Amy and Kris were along on this investigation they weren’t really afforded all that much camera time except for the boob-shot of Kris as she is unpacking the giant TAPS Monster Truck and Amy in an odd voice-over stating that this is the first time she has debated leaving an investigation due to the creepiness of the place.

Although video evidence was sadly lacking on this episode the audio did provide some intriguing noises and by noises I mean just that ‘noises’ and not ‘voices’ and by the way, the story of the girl being murdered was not able to be verified although Jason gives the school a ‘buy’ on that one stating that the gymnasium portion of the building wasn’t built until 1937 but that the police records only begin in 1940 giving the press ‘a pass’ on the three years in between. Working in the media however, I can emphatically tell you that even if the police didn’t write a report on a pedophile, murdering, and suicidal janitor that the story would have made the papers anyway! Trust me on that. They weren’t big on reporting pedophilia in the late 30’s, true, but you would have definitely seen something about the death of a young girl and a school janitor even if it was disguised as a ‘normal death’ report.

Did I mention that I really enjoyed this episode? Well, I did. The energy of the team was terrific, there were several moments that were ‘startling’ and it was just plain good old-school Ghost Hunters’ fun. Definitely one worth watching, or even re-watching at some point. When it was all said and done I'd give this episode an A- for entertainment value but for evidence captured, sorry, I've got to go with a D+ -- Sound off below in the comment section and give me your grades for the show (By the way did you know you can now sign in to comment with your Facebook account? Nifty huh? Now you don't have to take a specific MassLive.com community user account to let your voice be heard! Just click on the 'sign in with Facebook' button under the logo at the top-left of the page!).

Next week we really get back to the ‘normal Ghost Hunters’ as (finally) Steve Gonsalves and David Tango once again rejoin the team at an investigation of an old casino. I’ll be back on Monday with the preview, if not before, should something else break or occur to me.